Regional Meeting Yogyakarta

Regional Meeting Yogyakarta held on 2-4 May 2018 at Sanata Dharma University. After a rather hectic process of inviting grantees to register their participation, the committee managed to invite approx 80% grantees in Yogyakarta region (incl. Salatiga). The USD rector emphasized in his opening speech that we are still considered as elites in Indonesia, because to this date those who can pursue higher education are less than 30% of the population, let alone people who managed to have scholarship support. Therefore, it is important for the participants to make this opportunity wisely and maximize their learning throughout their university years.

The atmosphere of the first few hours were rather calm (not too lively), and only few who asked questions to the speaker. Thus, we decided to give them more time for small group discussions. It turned out well, and the participants seemed to be more engaged in their groups. Many particularly were enthusiastic to know other grantees from different universities and found sharing best practices useful.

As the meeting progresses, the participants’ enthusiasms develop and they showed more curiosity and criticality of what the speakers presented. A good deal of interests among the participants were also evident during Thijs Schut’s presentation, in fact few ended up challenging him by asking “what’s next?” (after the research), and “what kind(s) of contributions had he done after finding such problem in Flores?”.

The meeting concluded with SAS presentations from six different groups covering the six themes students’ face challenging; family, time (management), teaching staffs, English, tools/facilities, and food.